Paul Cowles

While hypothetical case studies are sometimes interesting, nothing beats examining a real company offering a real product. A few years ago, our team sat down to create our first product, called eventSherpa. In sharing our experience with building this product, we hope to illustrate why the marriage of Linux servers and Windows clients is an important one. Why Both Windows and Linux?Our goal was to create an inexpensive calendar application that supported numerous open standards and provided easy networked capabilities for sharing. Frustrated with Web calendars for daily use, we decided that our product must have a rich user interface and be usable on the majority of enterprise desktops. It had to include networked functionality that is enabled using Web services. The integrated Web services would initially be provided by a small server farm that would need to scale ... (more)

Web Service API and the Semantic Web

As the Semantic Web gains momentum, it's important for Web service developers to keep abreast of its technologies and prepare for a change in their industry. This article looks at how the Semantic Web applies to Web services, including what specifications are under development and how you might prepare for integration with future semantic applications. What Is the Semantic Web and How Does It Impact Web Services? The current World Wide Web presents large volumes of information in a format tailored for viewing by people. A person can surf from link to link, query search engines, o... (more)